Donald Trump Jr. Fails Miserably In Twitter War With Joy Reid

Jr. brought a slingshot. Reid brought an arsenal

MSNBC commentator Joy Reid didn’t mince words on Twitter as she dissected President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night.

In the process, she managed to irk Donald Trump Jr., who felt obliged to defend his dad against what previous administrations might have called “fair comment,” “free speech” or “First Amendment freedoms.”

The end result wasn’t so much a Twitter war as a social media massacre.

It all started when Reid posted this comment:

Church ... family ... police ... military ... the national anthem ... Trump trying to call on all the tropes of 1950s-era nationalism. The goal of this speech appears to be to force the normalization of Trump on the terms of the bygone era his supporters are nostalgic for. #SOTU

Apparently Church, Family, Police, Military, and The National Anthem are things the left hates. I think we would all be a lot better off if we embraced those values that allowed us to become the greatest nation in the world. https://t.co/IxBv2s1It4

Sounds good? Perhaps, but Reid’s thoughtful thread exposed the hypocrisy of the Trump administration and the notes he struck in his speech.

The fun part is, Trump doesn’t actually embody any of the values he’s harkening back to. Faith? He panders to the religious far right but claims he’s never even asked God for forgiveness. Family? He has flouted his marriage vows with porn stars and is accused by multiple women

of sexual harassment and worse. Law enforcement? Sure, he is leading the culture war against NFL players who kneel to oppose police killing black civilians, but he and House Republicans are also waging war on federal law enforcement.

And as for the military, Trump’s seeming eagerness to flirt with war with North Korea can’t be heartening. Trump is putting on a show; allowing his base to reminisce about an Ozzie and Harriet past they don’t even really value anymore based on their support for his “values.”

Bottom line: the first half of Trump’s #SOTU speech was pure pabulum: GOP family values boilerplate that the party traded in for demographic rage and reality show vulgarity by backing him. The second half was the dark matter Trumpism actually represents: